The Kashmir Trap

by Mario Bolduc

  This evening, her husband’s absence had upset Juliette more than usual. She’d been waiting for the perfect moment to announce her pregnancy ever since Dr. Rangarajan at the Apollo Hospital had confirmed it; this was to be an event they’d remember forever, but the right time just never seemed to come along. Last week, David had gone to Kathmandu and left her alone, this time with his mother, Béatrice, who’d briefly stepped ashore between cruises on her way back from Thailand: “How bored you must be. I know. I’ve been there.”

  Béatrice was likeable enough, not a burden, generous and well-meaning, but a bit too much for Juliette. Elegant and distinguished at fifty-three, she could still turn heads. She had boundless energy and stormed through other people’s lives with a vitality that was more than Juliette could stand. Besides, she just loved giving advice and instructions, which was all well and good, because, after all, she’d “been there.” Lately, though, Juliette just wanted to be alone with David.

  Béatrice had finally gone back to Montreal the day before, but not before saying hello to Bernatchez, “poor Philippe’s friend.” Finally, Juliette would have David all to herself. So she had the big table with the white cloth set in the dining room, asked Iqbal the gardener to choose some flowers specially, and had Daya put a bottle of champagne on ice. Next, she slipped into her finest dress, but the phone rang, and David told her the meeting would be dragging on.

  Juliette’s favourite time of day? Early in the morning, her “India moment,” as she called it. The rest of the day was spent with diplomats’ kids at the British School, which didn’t seem like India to her at all. It was an artificial oasis wholly apart from the sounds and smells of the country they were in. Here, in this neighbourhood, it was a different matter. The backfiring rickshaws zigzagging between overloaded buses; the shouts of merchants pushing tongas and carts to market; the “namastes” of the chai-wallahs — tea sellers — meandering through the new city looking for customers; the kids running after her the minute she stepped into the street and begging for candies, shouting, “ladu, ladu, ladu,” then getting back to their games as though nothing had interrupted them.

  Ever since they’d arrived in India, Juliette had taken to lounging in bed in the mornings, since she taught only in the afternoons. David didn’t dare wake her. He ate alone the breakfast Daya left him, then got behind the wheel of the Volvo he’d picked up from his predecessor last June (along with the house and the guard, Adoor). In Ottawa, the couple had shared a small apartment in the Glebe before finding themselves in charge of a Spanish inn that made them feel like unwelcome guests. Still, Juliette was convinced she’d done the right thing following David to the ends of the earth.

  Her friends, though, not so much. Juliette had cut short her studies of ancient languages to serve canapés and pastries to other diplomacy-widowed wives in a country where it was way too hot. Her future had been thrown away — “What about the master’s degree you wanted so badly?” — so she could act as a stand-in at embassy cocktail parties, a memsahib, a super house-slave, surrounded by inferior house-slaves. The young Juliette just smiled.

  Upon arriving, she’d enrolled in Hindi and Urdu classes at Jawaharlal Nehru University: Hindi so she could tell Daya he could really lay on the spices, and Urdu to beg Iqbal not to plant marigolds, which she hated. Okay, they were very popular in India, but there was no need to turn her garden into a flower market, was there?

  Then, in August, she’d found a job at the British School, or rather the oh-so-British Mrs. Fothergill had rounded her up to become part of her shock troops: “We mustn’t let the Yanks educate our children, must we?” she said over her cup of Darjeeling. She had an aversion to all things American, especially teachers. Juliette and David found the weekends far too short for Agra and the Taj Mahal, Jaipur and the Palace of Winds, the ancient city of Fatehpur Sikri. And Delhi, of course, old Delhi, where they had fun getting lost in the bustling, dirty, fascinating life of its little streets.

  But international politics soon caught up with them, and September 11 elbowed their contentment aside. By October, the invasion of Afghanistan brought war far too close for comfort; then in December, and much closer to home, came the suicide attack on India’s Parliament. March delivered the Gujarat massacres next, and yesterday the events in Jammu. In a matter of weeks, Juliette and David had bid farewell to the carefree and innocent life of their arrival in Asia the summer before.

  Juliette awoke to the sound of the shower … David, at last. She hadn’t heard him come in. She slipped on her robe and joined him in the kitchen. He was already on his way out again, briefcase in hand. “I slept on the sofa so I wouldn’t wake you. Meeting at eight. Gotta go.”

  “So the conference is off?” she inquired.

  “Nope. Not so far. Still on.”

  “Promise me you’ll be home early tonight.”

  David took her face in his hands. They were icy. She realized for the first time how tense he really was. She’d noticed his increased stress in recent days, but she’d put that down to Béatrice or maybe Bernatchez. Now, though, she had the impression it was something else. What was going on?

  “I can’t help thinking about my father,” he said. “I’ve become just like him, and I feel just what he felt.”

  Normally David never mentioned Philippe. It was almost as though the immense and monumental figure of his father was no longer his. So why now?

  “What’s with you? You’re acting strange.”

  David merely took cover behind his diplomat’s facade, and Juliette was baffled: she sensed that she’d lost him. Well, here goes nothing, she thought.

  “Look, David.”

  “I’ll try, till nine o’clock, tops. I promise.”

  “David, I need to say …”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  She knew what this meant. He was going to spend all evening in a meeting or on the phone … and part of the night. The big news would have to wait. The champagne, too.

  She noticed Luiz in the courtyard, standing by the Volvo. He was the High Commission’s clerk and a specialist in urgent photocopies, endless faxes, and updates on local restaurants with a modicum of cleanliness and where you could go without fear of bumping into other Canadians passing through. The young man was from Goa and lived close by — his mother worked as a cleaning lady for a Dutch manufacturer. Luiz had taken to David and had been begging for lifts ever since David made the mistake of picking him up after work. Rushing out of the house, David tossed Luiz the keys and turned to Juliette as she held her bathrobe tight around her.

  “Nine o’clock,” he said, and she smiled. He smiled back, looking like a kid who was late for school, lingering among the bougainvilleas. She had never loved him more than that morning and she regretted she hadn’t told him just now, hadn’t held him tight and led him back to the bedroom with its bed still warm from their bodies, and made love to him once more.

  Luiz was already behind the wheel and sliding the key into the ignition when David opened the door and got in, and they immediately sped away — of course, a day like any other. She’d relive this moment over and over in the coming months, this gentle parting as though on tiptoe. Then their love and their future, all of it, suddenly vanished in the humdrum glare of sunlight. What was it again that happened next? Raymond Bernatchez’s evening phone call? She couldn’t remember.

  “Juliette …” The high commissioner never disturbed them at home. She instantly expected the worst and steadied herself against the wall. “You’ll need to be brave,” he said.

  She thought of David and the announcement she’d wanted to make. Wonderful news. What a fool she’d been for thinking their lives could be one long, unending holiday along a flower-strewn path marked at intervals with unforgettable moments: “the illusion of normality,” as David described it. It was Vandana who had it right: “We count for nothing at all in the great horror that is life.”

  3
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  There was the nasal call for Delta flight 148 to Rome, and the passengers shuffled to the counter. Max O’Brien was one of them, ticket in one hand and Italian passport in the other. The crowd ground him to a halt directly beneath one of the three TV monitors. He looked up as someone turned up the volume. CNN showed the usual pictures of desolation: this time the carbonized carcass of a car blown up by terrorists in New Delhi, with one dead, Luiz Rodrigues, and one seriously injured, David O’Brien, both employees of the Canadian High Commission of India. Max stood immobile, paralyzed for a long time, his eyes fixed on the screen, his world pulverized yet again, and left so fragile that soon nothing of it would remain.

  “Your ticket, please, sir?”

  Max roused himself as the nasal voice reached him from behind the outstretched hand. Passengers around him were complaining. He left the lineup.

  Juliette was sorry she’d made fun of Béatrice when she got off at Maharani Bagh, her suitcases filled with gifts. “Oh, I know the feeling. I’ve been there before.” And for once she was right: “Déjà vu all over again.” As soon as the Gulfstream landed at Dorval, David’s mother had taken charge. She’d managed to get security to keep the journalists, those blood-sucking, carnivorous parasites, as she called them, away from the hangar where the ambulance awaited. She barked in the face of the muscle men from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police: “This just isn’t the time, got it?”

  Shrugs all around, sunglasses removed and replaced, wristwatches requiring nonstop attention, fingers pointed and threatening, hands outstretched, but Béatrice wasn’t giving an inch. “I don’t give a good goddamn about your investigation.”

  Juliette was still caught up in the whirlwind of the day before, when she’d headed for the Apollo Hospital after Bernatchez’s phone call. The bombing had happened in the northern part of Delhi along the banks of the Yamuna, he told her. Their car had been booby-trapped. Pity that was all they knew for the time being. “David’s dead, David’s dead,” she kept repeating as she ran through the hospital corridors, as though the mantra could somehow bring him back. Then she saw a familiar face, Dr. Rangarajan. She knew his smell, the timbre of his voice, gravelly as though he were always on the verge of coughing or clearing his throat. He held her tight for comfort with the words one always says at times like that, but she heard none of it. Then a thanedar in a uniform and moustache with an officer — also moustached — showed up and Rangarajan cleared off. The officer was in charge of the preliminary investigation and had Juliette tell them absolutely everything, even if, at first glance, it seemed utterly banal.

  She felt like answering, “It doesn’t matter. Nothing does anymore. He’s dead.”

  “Madame, he is still alive.”

  Juliette could have kissed them, both of the moustachioed cops. She wanted to see David, yes, absolutely, but she couldn’t. Just as she started screaming, Bernatchez ran toward her with Vandana and Mukherjee and took her hand, vowing to catch the cowards and to make sure the Canadian government would never let these monsters get away with it. She couldn’t have cared less about them or any other government, of course. All she wanted was to be with David, alone.

  “You’re both heading straight back to Canada,” Bernatchez told her.

  There were a doctor and a nurse aboard the Gulfstream supplied by Worldwide Air Ambulance Service and Dr. Mitchell from the High Commission, whom Juliette had never met. Neither one was very chatty, which suited her, since she was in no mood for conversation. She was numb from the sedatives and sealed inside a flying clinic. Through the porthole, she watched India drift away, perhaps forever: first little pinpoints of light, then nothing … total blackness.

  What was it the Mahabharata said: “All the creatures of the night crowded round me, deformed and terrifying …”?

  For the first time on board the plane, a longing for cocoa, an irresistible urge to bite into a piece of chocolate — maybe because I’m pregnant, she thought. Maybe it was just the sedatives she’d taken. Why now, all of a sudden? It was as though her brain had decided to come to her defence and keep her from thinking about what had happened to David. This yearning had nagged at her all night.

  Now at the end of the corridor of the intensive care unit at the Montreal General, she was sitting in a little room rigged up on the ninth floor, munching a Toblerone as though her life depended on it.

  “He’s still fighting, fighting hard.”

  Juliette turned her head toward a shadow engulfed in the blinding light from the downtown buildings that shone through the open windows.

  Dennis Patterson.

  Without a thought, she threw herself into his arms. She wanted to seem brave and stop crying, but it was too much for her. With every new visitor, the pain rose in her face, a torrent she couldn’t control. Patterson waited it out, then took her aside. He was bigger than she or David, and he held her by the shoulders like a fragile, delicate rose. As old as Bernatchez, but having aged better than the former pro football player, he was visibly proud of his white hair, and his bushy eyebrows made him look like a retired Santa.

  “I know he’ll get through this. Dr. Dohmann’s an exceptional neurosurgeon.” He sounded like a get-well card: sweet, sonorous, pious wishes, when what she really wanted was the truth and some explanation, here and now.

  “Why? Why him?”

  Patterson just shrugged. “A ton of reasons, I suppose, and nothing to do with who he is or what he represents.”

  “What are these RCMP types saying?”

  “Not much for now, but they have a man there.”

  Juliette knew who it was: a heavyset guy with very short hair whom David had introduced at one of their soirées. He seemed nice enough, certainly discreet, but she couldn’t recall his name. Patterson said he’d be helping the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s FBI.

  “Helping? Wait a minute, I don’t understand!” Juliette yelled. “Two employees of the High Commission in a bombed car, and the RCMP is just looking on?”

  “Imagine if it was the other way round and an Indian diplomat in Ottawa got bombed on Elgin Street. What would people say if the Indian police took charge?”

  Juliette couldn’t care less what people thought. She remembered incidents with American or British diplomats and the squads of FBI or Scotland Yard that showed up. The Mounties, however, were just leaving one officer on site to get eaten alive by the CBI.

  “That’s the way things are done, Juliette,” said Patterson.

  “The way things are done?”

  Bernatchez had promised: “The Canadian government would not let these monsters get away with it.” Words, words, words. “You know people in the department. You could do something. I’m sure a call to the right person in Ottawa would get them more involved.”

  “Look, Juliette. It’s frustrating, I know, and I agree, but there are bilateral agreements …”

  “Do something.”

  “I’ve talked to the minister, and he’s not against the idea of offering, say, additional logistical help to the Indian police.”

  “Additional logistical help? How about a pen-and- pencil set with John A. Macdonald on it?”

  Patterson sighed and made Juliette look at him. “Look, the important thing is for David to get better, stay alive. He’s going to need both of us for that. You especially.”

  Hallmark, Hallmark, Hallmark.

  She felt abandoned, coddled and silenced, cut off from reality.

  It was night again, and Juliette had hardly slept since her arrival in Montreal: just short periods of agitated sleep, awaking in sweat, stunned and disoriented. She wanted to be set up next to David, in the same room, at all times, but for both medical and security reasons, Patterson had explained, they couldn’t let her. She no longer felt like fighting and obediently followed Béatrice home.

  On her way out of the hospital, she chatted briefly with two Mounties from t
he airport who asked her the same questions as the Indian police before they left. What were they doing here anyway? Shouldn’t they be in New Delhi helping out their fellow officers?

  “Look at them pretending to be useful,” she yelled as she climbed into the taxi. “Good for what … raking in their pay?”

  “Do you remember those old films?” Béatrice replied, “The Indians. Not your kind, the others with feathers: Apache, Comanche, Cheyenne, who knows? When they attacked the pioneer wagon trains headed west, rows of them appeared on the mountaintops, menacing in their war paint, and fell on the poor settlers for no reason. We were never told why. No need. It just happened, like rain. No one justifies rain, do they?”

  What was she getting at? Juliette thought.

  “Well, terrorism is just the same, like Indians in the movies or rain in summertime. No need for a motive or a rationale. The goal of terrorists is to terrorize. That’s all there is. In other words, why even bother to investigate? What is there to find out? In any event, tomorrow or any moment now, three or four groups will claim responsibility for the attack, most likely Lashkar-e-Taiba. David was just one more statistic, and mere statistics don’t get investigated, they just pile up, nothing to get upset about. Then they get shuffled to the bottom of the pile. Vague, impersonal statistics. Open it,” said Béatrice, pointing to the glovebox.

  She did, and inside was a firearm, very small, a .25 calibre of the kind you might slip into a handbag. Juliette was surprised to see Béatrice had one.